Medias 'moral obligation'

Deacon · Post by **Deacon** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 10:08 pm

[quote="XenoWolf";p="411466"]Medias 'moral obligation'[/quote]
Just FYI, "media" is plural. If you intended to show possesion, the use of an apostraphe would be mandatory: The media's "moral obligation"

And it's not just "a service to the public." It's a service to the public from which you derive the money to make your rent, put food on the table, provide braces for your kids, etc. It is a business, one in which government subsidies are necessarily disallowed. That's just how the world works.

Aether · Post by **Aether** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 9:51 am

Indeed, the media is not a service, it is a business like any other. I'm not saying that it's good the way it is, but I don't see it changing in any significant way any time soon. Personally I dislike practically all media, and feel that few, if any media outlets are ever being anything but deliberately misleading. The problem is that it'd be hard to legislate against being "misleading", although I suppose there could be (and probably ought to be) a law against lying outright. But again, the media can easily stretch the truth pretty far without ever actually lying.

Azurain · Post by **Azurain** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 9:55 am

*shrugs* There are still limits on all businesses, just as there are limits to freedom of speech. It would be perfectly valid, at the very least, to put regulations on the media such that lying is disallowed, and that editorialism must be noted as such and not passed off as objective reporting.

Grumlen · Post by **Grumlen** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 7:43 pm

Just out of curiosity, how many of you have read a newspaper int he last few years? Often, theres only 1 or 2 facts per story and the rest is just quotations from people that were interviewed. I'd say that it's fairly impossible for such reports to be unbiased. You have to keep in mind that the media IS in the business of making money. Because of this, they'll do whatever it takes to make money short of breaking their integrity, since then people will simply treat them as tabloids (and not very good ones at that). Still, the media would have to go pretty far to break their integrity, and it's obvious that we're not even close yet.

Azurain · Post by **Azurain** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 7:47 pm

And that's the problem, because in my opinion the media has already pretty much abandoned its integrity, but nobody seems to care... : \

Deacon · Post by **Deacon** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 8:26 pm

[quote="Grumlen";p="412514"]they'll do whatever it takes to make money short of breaking their integrity[/quote]
That's not necessarily rare as it is. Hell, remember Rathergate? Most of these underhanded SNAFUs, however, do not receive such national attention. Hell, sometimes they're just caused by lazy reporting, not checking sources, and generally repeating whatever they want you to believe.

Grumlen · Post by **Grumlen** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 10:29 pm

Yeah, but as long as the general public doesn't see it that way, they're still good.

elroy · Post by **elroy** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 10:54 pm

[quote="Grumlen";p="412514"]Just out of curiosity, how many of you have read a newspaper int he last few years?[/quote]1 or 2 papers each day since I was about 12. I try to keep informed. At least newspapers here haven't totally gone crazy with sensationalism. Yet.

XenoWolf · Post by **XenoWolf** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 11:08 pm

Indeed.. I usually catch my news either on my cell phone, or on direct-from-AP/Reuters sources like Yahoo News.

Rileyrat · Post by **Rileyrat** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 4:43 am

I don't think they are morally obligated to do so really. I wish they would but thats besides the point. Oddly enough there is a news station here (Colorado Springs) that is picking apart local political ads. They did it to both sides and it seems like they are not trying to sway your opinion at all. They seem to really want you to make a choice based on facts! Now thats just scary.

Rembrandt Q. Einstein · Post by **Rembrandt Q. Einstein** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 10:18 am

heh, I agree with Azurain, that there need to be greater repercussions for blatant lies in the media, ESPECIALLY in political ads, but we all know that's not going to happen.

R.Bloodgood · Post by **R.Bloodgood** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 3:14 pm

I just think that, if they're going to be so obviously biased, they should at least stop pretending they're not. Did you know that at one of the big 3 news stations, the political contributions is something like $400,000 to the dems and $1000 to the republicans? I mean, for christ's sake, a 400:1 ratio is way past the margin of error.

Azurain · Post by **Azurain** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 5:23 pm

Er, wait, are you claiming that an organization cannot support one candidate financially and maintain relative objectivity in actual reporting? I'm not saying it happens, or that it'd be easy, but I still fail to see how media organizations donating money to political campaigns just like other corporations do is somehow supposed to have anything to do with media reporting fallaciously.

And for ...'s sake, can we maybe stop with all this Bush vs. Kerry nonsense spilling over into completely unrelated threads?

R.Bloodgood · Post by **R.Bloodgood** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 5:30 pm

No, I'm saying that when all the people that work there all believe the same thing, you shouldn't say that you're unbiased. Because if you really were, there should, statistically speaking, be an even split.

I used the contribution example because it was convientiant. If I really wanted to say the media was a bunch of lying liberal pigs, I could list a lot of stuff. But I really don't care enough to do so.

Carry on.

Azurain · Post by **Azurain** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 5:48 pm

You can have a personal bias and not allow it to become a significant professional bias... you realize this, right? So the media could (and I'm not saying it is) be unbiased while at the same time being chalk full of liberally biased people.

Real Life Forums

Medias 'moral obligation'

Does the media have a moral obligation to be non-partisan?

Who is online